Tonight has been particularly difficult. Not that in my "Life with Autism" I've had it particularly easy. But it's always hardest right after I thought it was getting better and then abruptly found myself slapped upside the head with disappointment. "Seizures are less frequ......... Well, hold that thought, never mind..." You'd think I would learn to not get my hopes up by now, but thank goodness I'm stubborn. I still get them up. I often crash and burn, but to me that's still better than sitting in the parking lot not moving at all.
After Brandon got settled after a particularly rough seizure, I sat at my desk and reflected on something I had read in a book of quotes by Oswald Chambers. It was about being broken bread and poured out wine. Jesus was that. He was broken bread and poured out wine for us. For me. For my son. He calls us to be that as well - in the hand of God. He allowed himself to be bruised, beaten, and crushed for my sins. That's perhaps the only thing that truly gives me sanity in this Life with Autism and Seizures we must live. That no matter how broken up and poured out I feel, he's been through worse. Who am I then to not allow myself to be so 'stomped on and crushed' so to speak in how He would choose to produce wine through me? Oswald says, "God can never make me wine if I object to the fingers He uses to crush me with." Which for me is that relentless autism, those relentless seizures.
The thing about true faith, true HOPEISM to me, is just that. We don't get to choose the manner in which God will teach us, or who he will use to teach us. Allowing yourself to be broken bread and poured out wine for God is in staying where God put you or enduring for however long you must, whatever situation he has put you in... It means allowing yourself to be used by him through whatever manner he chooses to use you. It means so many things, but most of all it means staying the course and never giving up. I think the most frustrating thing for me is to see those with lesser burdens giving up so quickly. If prayer isn't answered, they give up. If something doesn't go their way, they leave. They want to experience the throne of God without ever having first experienced carrying His cross. To yield to God is to draw ever closer to him as your Shepherd and have faith in Him and in what he will do in your life by being the broken bread and poured out wine he desires to use "to feed His sheep."
It is hard. It is hard to continually have your prayers go unanswered, to continually have to battle day in and day out. To watch not just your life be broken bread and poured out wine -- but your child's life be that in God's hands for a purpose you cannot know or understand in this life.
I'm just so very thankful that what I have learned, is that when I think I can't be broken any more, he gives His mercy. When I feel there's nothing left of me to pour out, he fills me with His grace.
I guess to more fully appreciate or experience the 'muchness' of God that I seek through this journey, I must first fully understand what it is to allow myself to be 'mushed' by God.
And I think that's where we lose folks.
It's too hard to do that.
It takes too long.
So they quit.
It is hard.
But for no matter how long -
I will Never Quit.
